


Thoughts at Night

by lettersfromnowhere



Series: Starmora Oneshots [4]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Chopin in space!!!, F/M, Oneshot, classical music name dropping, projecting my music tastes onto fictional characters, the things you find in intergalactic junk shops..., what even is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: “It’s a piano,” Peter explained. “Type of musical instrument. They use these in a lot of Terran music. You’ve probably heard one without knowing it.”Gamora smiled in spite of herself. Of course that would be the one thing Peter took notice of in a junk shop bursting at the seams with every imaginable knickknack.(OR: Peter comes across a familiar object from his former life, and reminisces.)





	Thoughts at Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rather unorthodox concept; I have been wanting to find a way to project my love of classical music onto fictional characters since...well, about two weeks ago, and this seemed like one way to do that. Beta'd by the lovely @wawa_girl. 
> 
> I reference Chopin's Nocturne no. 2 in E-Flat Major (subtitled "Thoughts at Night", hence the title) many times in the latter half of this. A link for your listening pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGRO05WcNDk

 

Gamora could not, hard as she tried, discern what purpose such a bulky, seemingly useless object could serve, nor why Peter was looking at the boxy thing in total amazement. “What is this again?” She asked, watching as he ran his fingers almost reverently over its varnished wooden edges.

 

“It’s a piano,” Peter explained. “Type of musical instrument. They use these in a lot of Terran music. You’ve probably heard one without knowing it.” She smiled in spite of herself. Of _course_ that would be the one thing Peter took notice of in a junk shop bursting at the seams with every imaginable knickknack.

 

“It makes music?” Gamora asked, examining the instrument for any possible sound-producing features. She didn’t see any.

 

“Yeah. It’s got keys” – Peter lifted a wooden lid, exposing a series of alternating black and white keys – “and you press them to make the sound come out.”

 

“I see.” Gamora gingerly pressed a key, producing a tinny but clearly audible sound.

 

“Remember that story I told you about the horrible first-grade music teacher I had?” Peter asked, lips quirking into a wryly fond smile.

 

“Ms. Kestelhouse? Of course I remember.” She’d had far too much fun picturing a young Peter vengefully belting out the assigned songs several keys out of tune to get a rise out of his “evil” music teacher to forget it.

 

“Ms. Kettering, but yeah, that’s the one,” Peter chuckled. “Haven’t seen many pianos since then, but every time I do, I think of her playing the piano as she yelled at us to ‘sing out,’ whatever that meant.”

 

“Hey, Quill, I found something – what is _that?”_ Rocket asked, cutting off his own sentence as he walked up on the two hovering over the as-yet-unidentified object.

 

“Musical instrument,” Peter explained again. “Called a piano. It does this.” He slammed his fingers into the keys in the most obnoxious chord he could produce.

 

“Don’t abuse the merchandise!” A cranky shop clerk called from a counter situated behind several crammed shelves of what looked like a thousand tchotchkes of all varieties, uses, and planets of origin.

 

“That all it does?” Rocket asked, even more skeptical than usual.

 

“Well, I mean, it sounds nice if you actually know how to play it,” Peter said, shrugging nonchalantly. “Which I don’t.”

 

“Useless,” Rocket appraised. “I’m gonna look for more weird tech.”

 

“If you are not interested in purchasing the piano, please stop touching it,” the clerk shouted.

 

“We’re not sure if we want to buy it or not,” Peter called back. Gamora elbowed his side sharply. “ _Ow!”_

“We are not buying that thing,” she hissed.

 

“I know, I just wanna play with it,” Peter defended himself. “Hey, Drax! Come check out this thing I found!”

 

* * *

 

 

“So you know how we were looking at that piano earlier?” Peter asked, back on the ship and settling in for the night.

 

“Please do not tell me you bought that thing,” Gamora sighed.

 

“No, ‘course not. Where would we put it? None of us even know how to – never mind. I didn’t buy it,” Peter said, pulling something from his pocket.

 

“Then why is this conversation relevant?” Gamora asked archly.

 

“Wow, prickly much?” Peter rolled his eyes in mock irritation. “Anyway, you seemed interested, so I downloaded some piano music. Thought you might want to hear it. No words, just piano.”

 

Gamora’s features relaxed. “Oh, of course,” she said softly, taking the earbud Peter offered.

 

“Snobs loved this kind of music on earth,” Peter told her, glancing down at the Zune’s screen. “But sometimes my mom would put it on to help me sleep.”

 

“Really?” Gamora glanced at the Zune’s darkening screen. “Do you remember her playing this specific song?”

 

“No, but…I do remember this one,” Peter replied softly, flicking several songs over to a soft, instantly relaxing melody. She felt her muscles relax as she listened, tension falling victim to the piece’s soft, aching serenity.

 

“I can see why she used this to help you sleep,” Gamora said after a moment of silent contemplation, quietly appreciative.

           

Peter thought, with no small amount of nostalgia, that back when he was six and his mother would play her Chopin tape to help him sleep, she’d never have imagined that he’d one day call a buglike alien with the ability to do that in a second, no music necessary, his sister. Or that he’d share the music she found so calming with a scruffy band of ne’er-do-well space vagabonds including, but not limited to, a talking raccoon or a sentient tree. This life wasn’t what anyone had expected, but –

 

“I wouldn’t trade this for anything,” Peter thought aloud. Gamora looked up, meeting his sudden gaze fondly.

 

“You in one of your romantic moods?” She asked, reaching for his hand.

 

“Thinking about my mom,” he replied, voice hitching slightly as he glanced downwards. “How weird she would have thought this all was.”

 

“Weird is relative,” Gamora offered, laying a hand on his forearm. “And not always a bad thing.”  

 

“’Course not, didn’t mean it like that.” Peter tried to shrug casually, but the attempt at nonchalance was halfhearted at best. “But it still feels kinda surreal, sharing this music she loved with people she’d never in her wildest dreams have imagined I’d meet up with.”

 

“Weird or not, you found yourself a family. I think she’d be proud of that,” Gamora said, her free hand toying with the earbud’s cord.

 

“Yeah, I guess she would.” Peter looked out at nothing in particular, blinking rapidly to clear the incipient wetness welling up in his eyes. “And you know what else she’d be proud of?”

 

“What?” Gamora asked, trying not to let on that she knew what he was going to say so as not to dampen the enjoyment of its reception.

 

“She’d be proud I found someone like you.”  

 

“Really? Because you couldn’t have done any better?” She tried to carry off an effortlessly annoyed tone, but she couldn’t keep the tenderness from her voice entirely.

 

“Nope. You’re the greatest. Just stating facts,” he told her, his tone softly teasing; Gamora rolled her eyes but didn’t stop him when he draped his arm across her shoulders. “’S one’s called ‘Thoughts at Night.’”  

 

“Fitting,” Gamora replied. “It seems like good music to listen to when you need to think.”

 

"Calming, isn’t it?” He asked, leaning back in his chair to rest his feet against the controls. Normally Gamora would have protested at that; right now it was the furthest thing from her mind. 

 

Gamora nodded in concurrence as she leaned into his side. “I’m…glad you showed me this,” she admitted. “I’m surprised you never mentioned it.”

 

“Never thought about it much before today. It was kind of a small thing,” Peter explained.

 

“Mr. Sentimental himself admitted that there’s such thing as a ‘small’ memory?” Gamora teased. “I am profoundly shocked.”

 

“Small, yeah, but those are the best kind.”

 

Watching the hours slip away, moment by moment, it felt as if even the smallest fragment of a memory could be never-ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheesy endings are my stuff, man.


End file.
